As a society moves forward, it is faced with the perennial problem of an aging infrastructure. Any large infrastructure immediately begins to age after completion. Much of the technology used in its construction ages by the time the infrastructure project is finished. As technology moves forward, as social mores evolve and the populace's expectations shift, technology improvements and changes to the infrastructure will be irresistibly mandated. One prominent example of such concerns street lighting.
Street lighting continues to be one of a city's most important and pressing concerns for various reasons. A first reason is to ensure that adequate lighting is provided for the safety of pedestrian, bicyclists, vehicle operators and passengers. A second reason is cost. Conventional lighting is costly to operate and to maintain. It is for this reason that many city infrastructure authorities have decided to either replace or newly install street lighting that is LED-based. Improvement of the monitoring and control of the street lighting is also entailed in upgrading a street lighting architecture.
In general it is not sufficient to just improve a single infrastructure but it is desirable to integrate various and disparate infrastructures in order to create a synergistic result that can be derived from using their various functions in combination with one another. An upgraded infrastructure may also provide “hooks and handles” for interfacing with future additions to the infrastructure, such as accommodating additional functions and public service missions.
There is therefore a need to upgrade street lighting infrastructure and accommodate other societal services with improvements to street lighting architecture.